Potato Farmers in Bihar’s Katihar put Profit in ‘Cold Storage’

Patna: Despite the bumper potato crop, farmers Rajendar Mandal, Naushad Ali, Manoj Singh, Abdul Rahman and Sanjay Yadav of Bihar’s Katihar district are visibly upset and worried. The lack of storage facilities and few cold storage units are forcing farmers to go for a distress sale.

With no minimum support price (MSP) for potatoes, like maize, thousands of farmers in the flood-ravaged Seemanchal region—comprising Kishanganj, Araria, Purnia and Katihar districts—are struggling for survival. Their demand for an MSP has fallen on deaf ears.

Till early March, Mandal, Ali, Singh, Rahman and Yadav expected profit—but their hopes have been dashed. “What can we do? After the two bad years of the pandemic, we were hoping to get the right return on our investment and hard labour. It again seems impossible,” Mandal tells Newsclick.

There are thousands of farmers like Mandal in Seemanchal. Like maize farmers, they are left with no other option but to sell their produce at a low price.

The potato farmers are worried about the sudden temperature rise in the last week of March itself and fear unseasonal rains as their produce is kept in the open. “The potatoes will get damaged, in case, of untimely rains in the coming days and due to the rise in temperature. We are helpless because the state government doesn’t provide storage facilities,” says Mandal.

There are only five functional private cold storage units with the capacity to store 7 lakh sacks of potatoes in Katihar. This is less than the required capacity to store potatoes after the harvest. The only three government cold storage units in the district were shut down in recent years.

“It is true that the lack of cold storage facilities upsets potato farmers. There is not a single government cold storage in the district,” Arun Singh, a district official, tells Newsclick.

According to district agriculture office data, thousands of farmers have cultivated potatoes on nearly 8,000 hectares in the district and produced nearly 23 lakh quintals. “There was a bumper potato crop this time,” Rahul Kumar, another district official, says.

According to Ali, a farmer usually keeps one quintal potato in two jute bags of 50 kg each. “It means 46 lakh potato bags (considering the official record of 23 lakh quintals) need to be stored in cold storage. But the few private cold storage units lack the capacity,” he says.

If the government had constructed cold storage units, adds Ali, it would have helped farmers increase their profit. “With no storing facilities, the farmers are being exploited by local and outsider traders.”

Explaining the loss borne by the farmers, Yadav says, “Our cost of production per hectare is more than Rs 1 lakh but we get less return. We have no faith in the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government at the Centre, which had promised to double the income of farmers by 2022. Farmers have been suffering heavy losses year after year and are forced to resort to distress sale of their crops.”

Similarly, thousands of maize farmers have been forced to resort to a distress sale. According to the state agriculture department, nearly 65% of total maize in Bihar—the third-largest producer in the country—is grown in Seemanchal and Koshi regions alone.

According to the Patna-based Central Potato Research Institute, potato is produced seasonally but marketed throughout the year. Due to the lack of cold storage units, farmers are unable to store their produce safely, forcing them to sell it at a nominal price immediately after the harvest. This causes a sudden crash in price during the peak harvesting season.

As per the state agriculture department, potato is the fourth major crop after rice, wheat and maize in Bihar. The state ranks third after Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal in potato cultivation area and production in the state.